If leica were to make a new digital CL...

If leica had the balls to make a new digital CL and decided to produce a camera that reproduced the perception of the human brain(yes,brain not eye),what size would the sensor need to be to accomplish this.
Im asking after wading through another set of bokeh shots;bokeh is popular presumably because its almost invisable to us,something seen out of the corner of ones eye that flickers and is gone before it can be perceived,almost dreamlike.
However what we actually perceive is always in sharp focus so the sensor size to achieve this normallity would be quite small,..........what do you think?
Half frame film never made it because of a lack in ultimate quality,this quality arguement is no longer an issue(at least in terms of digital to digital comparisons at up to fairly large sizes)when comparing sensor size.
So if you were designing a new camera that most mimicked human perception what sensor size and angle of view would this recorder have?...:smile:

Neil, glad to see you and thank you for this thought provoking thread. It's too early for my brain to function at full speed. Truth be told, even at full speed I don't have the technical background to respond intelligently. However I do see what you're after in discussing the "bokeh" phenomenon. (Back in ye olden days when I was using my OM-1 I did shoot apertured preferred but I never heard the word bokeh used. I guess it's a digital term?)

As I think of it now, as I type here at my computer, I'm aware of the near and far background beyond my screen but I am focussing on what is right in front of me. Sometimes this kind of focus can really enhance an image. These days I tend to shoot very wide 99% of the time, and my DOF is usually quite deep. This is where I start to get lost in the math - what does my LX5's lens at its widest translate to into an angle of view?

Good question the answer is harder for me, maybe only because it is more about my feeling than some sort of arbitrary reality, now that is an oxymoron. I see in 45˚ giver or take, so the lens would have to cover this area. The bigger the sensor the better not because of quality, even though that is important, but because of controlling DOF. I really do like to abstract in both my mind and my eye. Because of this fact the smaller the sensor the larger the aperture that I require. To give me what I want a full frame camera a lens between a 40 to 50 mm f/2.8 lens would do, and for a µ43 I would something like a 20 to 25 mm f/1.8.

When I put this all together it is exactly what I have with my GF-1 so maybe Leica is wise not to make a new digital CL as the competition would be tough.

from my experience Bokeh or should I say the love of Bokeh is a relatively new phenomenon that grew up around the internet and the DSLR. Much like HDR, Bokeh is a fad that some people really love and will go to the ends of the earth to achieve, and for others they simply do not care. After witnessing way to many flame wars on Canon DSLR forums I put my self in the simply do not care camp.

Anyway with regards to Leica, in my humble opinion what they need to do if they wish to become relevant again outside of the tiny market they have always had is to ditch the M mount for something new.

The M mount has been around forever, it works great for rangefinders and people that love rangefinders will always love the M mount. However for the rest of photographic world they simply do not care.

If Leica were to use the same technology and sensor that they use in the M9 and M8 and make a camera to compete with the Sony Nex, and M4/3, and have AF lenses they could have a real winner.

Taking that a step further, back in the day Minolta used to make a SLR that shot with 110 film which was tiny compared with 35mm film. I think this size would be an interesting size and shape for a camera company to persue. Making very high quality cameras in a tiny form. Leica could be all over that if they chose to

I will plead my ignorance on the technical aspects of sensor size and human vision. The only form in which I have across this kind of discussion before relates to lens focal length and human vision with typical line being that a 50mm focal length on 35mm more or less corresponds to human vision.

I think my response (or possibly my cop out) is that even if it is technically possible to examine human brain function and eye function to come up with an answer I am not convinced that at another level of seeing we would all end up seeing the same thing. I'm not sure that that makes sense so I'll suggest that seeing is psychological as much as biological and how our consciousness shapes our seeing is as important as the material processes going on in our brains.

I also think that the only time our photographs even come close to our seeing is in the act of framing (even then the 'frame' changes the nature of seeing) because once the image is captured and displayed the image becomes a subject of our vision and how it is viewed is determined not only by elements within the image but a host of other elements too.

And for one final thought - human vision, even when we stare at something, does not deliver a 'still' image. A photograph, a still image, therefore, cannot replicate human vision.

Right. It's entirely possible that the above is a load of cr*p. So feel free to ignore me.

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